A Reader Asks: What Was That Old New Yorker Story I Can't Get Out of My Mind?

A learned reader who owns The Complete New Yorker was still unable to track down a story that’s haunting him. Can you help? We tried, too. No dice. Whoever writes in first with the correct answer, whatever it is, wins a copy of The New Gilded Age, in my opinion one freaking fantastic document of our times.

I read a New Yorker short story circa 1966 that has been haunting me ever since but have been unable to track down. All I remember (I think) is that it was about a summer romance in Brooklyn or some place like that, and it had a kicker of an ending in which it was revealed that the hero, who had been called by some more or less dashing name, was really named Howard. Then there was a sort of implication that the two lovers never saw each other again. In around 1979 I described this to Roger Angell, for whom it rang no bells. Then yesterday I was on a 9 1/2 hour flight from Rome and opened up NYer on DVD and searched consecutively for “summer,” “summer romance,” “Brooklyn,” etc., and looked at summaries for everything between 1960 and 1971, but had no luck. Do you have any suggestions?

Comments

Now that we have the Complete New Yorker on dvd, and Playboy magazine coming out this fall, and MAD magazine already out on dvd, I suggest someone come out with the complete Esquire. I would definitely buy it
for the old covers.

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